


Tomorrow is Still Far Away

by iam93percentstardust



Series: Tied Together [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Kidnapping, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Politics, Pre-Stuckony, Vignette, alternate universe - warlords, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29043252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iam93percentstardust/pseuds/iam93percentstardust
Summary: “What if you could have both?” Steven asks James. “Me and an omega?”“You really think that could work?”“I think,” Steven says slowly, “that there’ve been more than a few omegas your father’s introduced you to that you might have been interested in if it weren’t for me.”“And what about you?”“Well, I already know that I tend to like mouthy brunets with a penchant for trouble so I think I’m pretty much set.” He means for it to be a joke but James doesn’t laugh. Instead, his frown deepens, the furrow between his brows getting more pronounced. Steven gently brushes a kiss over his troubled mouth. “Hey. We don’t have to find an omega tomorrow. We can think this over, let Papa know our plan. We’ve got time.”//OR: Steven and James through the years as they grow up together
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Tied Together [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1759765
Comments: 30
Kudos: 237





	Tomorrow is Still Far Away

**Author's Note:**

> Since people have been asking for it, here is a prequel to Spoils of War, to explain a little bit of what Steven and James were going through before Tony showed up

Steven isn’t paying attention when the omega is brought in. He’s listening to a story James is telling him, about the day’s hunt and the tracks he saw out there. The hunters think it might have been a boar, which will require more serious tools to hunt than the bows and arrows they’d had with them today. The boar weighs heavy on Steve’s mind. If it really is a boar, and not one of the myriad other creatures stalking the forest, that spells trouble. A boar means that they’ll need to hunt it down soon, before it can get into the village’s stores. Winter is fast approaching, they can’t lose any of their supplies to a beast.

They don’t have much that can take down a boar, Steven fears. They’re not seen very often in this part of the forest so the spears are likely rusted and dull with age, if they haven’t been melted down for other purposes.

It’s then that he hears a dull thud and turns, face lighting up when he realizes that Papa has returned. Ordinarily, it would be Steven or James out there on the waters, leading their people in battle, but Papa had specifically requested this raid, for reasons he’d been unwilling to disclose to anyone.

“Papa! You’re home!” James exclaims cheerfully, waving his tankard in the air. His gaze lands on something and he tilts his head, a curious set to his mouth appearing, one that’s a little indulgent and pouty. Steven doesn’t see it very often, only when James is feeling particularly indolent, and he wonders at its appearance now. “And what is this you’ve brought us?”

That’s when Steven sees him: a slight omega, visibly trembling even from where Steven is sitting. He’s dressed in what were once fine blue silks, now bloodstained along the hems of his pants, and torn in other places. He doesn’t know if the shirt was always meant to be that thin or if it got that way with age, but it’s nearly transparent, revealing a slightly soft stomach—the mark of a wealthy omega, he knows—and small nipples, perking up in the cold air. His gaze travels back over the expensive clothes and he realizes—this is no northern omega, raided from one of the Bains’ shipping vessels, this is one from the Southern Kingdom, long thought untouchable by word of Papa himself.

“Papa, what have you done?” he asks, horror-struck, cutting off Papa’s words. They cannot risk open war with the Starks, they’re barely holding on as it is. “You’ve brought war to us.”

But it gets worse, because of course it does. Papa pulls the blindfold off to reveal—honey brown eyes that blink in the low light, a pert nose that wrinkles with the smell of the Hall, lovely full lips that Steven would love to kiss if only this omega isn’t—isn’t _Tony Stark_.

“This?” Papa says with a flourish, like he’s revealing some new magic trick for the village children. “This isn’t war. This is the _spoils_ of war.”

* * *

He doesn’t remember when he first met James. They had been young—too young for what they had gone through—and Steven had been sick all through that desperate journey from the mountains to the sea. His family hadn’t grown up with James and Papa. They’d lived on a small farm some distance away from anyone else.

Papa tells him that he doesn’t know what happened to Steven’s parents. He had been leading his people east towards the mountains when they’d stumbled across the ruins of Steven’s farm. They’d almost passed it by until someone—Papa says it was James but James must have only been a few years old at that time and Steven doesn’t know how James could have even heard the cries of a child as young as he is over the sounds of the group the two were traveling with, let alone make himself loud enough to get the group to stop.

Whoever it might have been, Steven knows that he was eventually found amongst the rubble. Papa, with his inevitably kind heart, would never have left him there to die but it had been his wife, Winifred, who had convinced him to raise Steven and James together. After Winifred’s death only a few short months later, Papa had kept his promise to his late wife and taken in Steven as almost a second son, though no one would have ever mistaken James and Steven to be brothers.

Even in their boyhood, there’d been _something_ between them, something unspoken but special. When the boys were younger, Papa had encouraged it, never once speaking of James finding an omega to wed, though it had been obvious James would grow up to be an alpha and finding an omega would eventually be expected of him. Instead, he’d seemed to shove Steve into James’ path at every possible moment and, as it had been something both of them had wanted, neither of them had argued.

It had seemed right to them. They were Steven and James, James and Steven. To find one was to find the other. That’s the way it had always been. That’s the way it always would be.

* * *

Steven is seven when the Bains attack. He’s woken in the middle of the night to Papa hustling into the bedroom Steven and James share. Papa yanks back the blankets covering their bed.

“Hurry, now,” Papa orders. “Up you get.”

“Wuzzgoinon’?” James mutters sleepily.

Papa doesn’t tell them. He doesn’t have to. Steven can hear what’s happening outside, the furious war cries of the invaders, the desperate screams of their own people, the clang of sword meeting sword. Firelight from the window flickers on the walls, casting shadows across the room, and he wonders if their village is on fire, if they will have a home to return to.

“Where do we go?” he asks, immediately breaking into a coughing fit from the smoke wafting in from the open window. Tomorrow will be a bad day, if they live to see the morning. He already can tell that he’ll spend the next few days coughing.

“The forest,” Papa tells them.

He thrusts a bundle of fabric into Steven’s arms and then a matching one into James’. Steven has never seen the famed tapestries detailing their people’s history that lined the king’s hall across the mountains but he knows immediately that this is what he’s holding. James had told him all about them when he’d been taken to see them a few weeks ago. It seems absurd to trust a sickly boy like himself with something as precious as the tapestries, but he grasps that there is no other choice.

“We’ll see you again, right?” James asks worriedly, clearly going through the same thought process that Steven is.

Papa doesn’t say anything, only casts a concerned look at the door. The fighting is getting louder. They have to go soon, but he doesn’t want to, not without the reassurance that everything will be the same when they come home.

“Papa?” James asks, voice going high and thick with worry.

Papa gives them a thin smile. “My sweet boys,” he murmurs, pulling them both close. He kisses both their foreheads and then releases them. “Go quickly! James, you know the floorboard in the tapestry room. The loose one, it’ll lead you right into the forest. Hurry!”

James nods, straightening up as he takes charge. He leads Steven into the tapestry room, down under the loose floorboard, which apparently leads into a tunnel, and out into the forest. Steven looks back only once, after they’ve reached the trees, to see their village burning, their home outlined in the light from the flames. He shudders and turns back to James, resolving not to look back again.

* * *

By the time he turns thirteen six years later, he’s mostly come to accept that he’s never going to be strong enough to go on the raids. However, that doesn’t stop him from picking every single fight with every single bully that has the misfortune of coming across him. Steven is more than willing to fight back against every injustice that he sees, no matter how much bigger and stronger than him the other guy is. Fortunately, he has James on his side.

James, who is always willing to wade into a fight with him even if he sighs long-sufferingly beforehand. James, who gives him those cocky smiles before running off to training like he knows how bitterly jealous Steven is. James, who still slips into his room late at night to curl around him, even though they haven’t shared a room in nearly two years.

“You ever think you’re gonna get an omega?” Steven asks him one day. James had officially presented a few months earlier and there’s been talk amongst the village elders about his presentation. Steven hasn’t been invited to any of the talks of course, but he’s small and slight and people tend to overlook him, so he picks up on a lot of what gets said around the village.

James leans back on his hands, kicking his heels against the side of the wall they’re sitting on as he thinks it over. “Nah,” he says eventually, in that easy, casual tone that only James can pull off. “I’ve already got you. What do I need another omega for?”

Steven bites back the comment on the tip of his tongue. James has been making more and more comments along these lines recently, calling him an omega and such. And Steven gets it, he really does. He doesn’t exactly look like an alpha, or even a beta if he’s being honest. And it’s not like he minds James implying that Steven is his. Really, it gives him a little thrill every time he hears those words. He _wants_ to be James’, almost as badly as he wants James to be his. He’s known that for ages.

The only thing is—he’s heard the omegas in the village talk about what it was like before their presentation, right? He knows all the feelings that he’s supposed to be feeling right now—that everyone _expects_ him to be feeling.

But he’s not feeling them.

He doesn’t feel nurturing or gentle or anything else that the omegas are feeling. His scent doesn’t seem to be softening out into something sweet and delicate. He doesn’t look at the smaller children in the village and think about having one someday.

No, if anything, he’s feeling a lot closer to how James felt before his presentation: the rage, the irritability, and the urge to claim and take and have. He caught a whiff of his scent the other day when he woke up, when it’s strongest, and nearly recoiled at how sharp it’s gotten. Sometimes, he looks at James and feels this nearly overwhelming need to pin James down and—and he doesn’t know what, but he _burns_.

But he doesn’t say any of that. James thinks he’ll present as an omega, and James knows him better than anyone. Surely James is right. Surely all these feelings will amount to nothing.

“Yeah,” he agrees, keeping his doubts to himself. “You’ve got me.”

* * *

And then he presents.

And everything changes.

* * *

James insists that nothing has changed, that he still plans to ask Steven to mate with him, even though they’re both alphas. Steven believes him. James is nearly as stubborn as he is, especially when it comes to things he wants, and Steven is something that he wants. For his part, Steven would be happy to let the whole world burn if it meant he could have James at his side and in his life.

But—

But he hears the whispers. He’s growing like a weed now, taller and broader now than he’d ever dreamed he would be. No one will ever mistake him for an omega again, not with the way he looks. But he’s still Steven and he has a lifetime of making himself unseen. People have grown used to overlooking him and that means that he frequently overhears the conversations he isn’t supposed to hear, the ones about James’ future mate.

They’re not always about James himself. Sometimes they’re about the future of their people. The coastline is a hard place to try to survive and the war they’re waging against the Bains is harder still. Their people are barely surviving here, forget trying to thrive, and every year, the birthrate decreases. Steven knows that they need to return back home, travel west across the mountains, and settle back in the bountiful plains. But the scouts that Papa sends back yearly never return, letting them know that it’s not yet safe to go home.

It takes Steven a while to figure out what any of that has to do with James, but then one night, after the children have been dismissed from the Great Hall (though no one has noticed that Steven has stayed behind), one of the elders says, “We have to think about our future. Our people look to you and your son for leadership. If James cannot provide a future—”

“He’s happy with Steven,” Papa protests. “I won’t ruin his happiness for the sake of a child he may not even want.”

“George,” one of the other elders, an alpha called Nicholas who Steven has long respected for being fair but brutally honest, says gently but pointedly. “We’ve let you have a lot of leeway after Winifred passed, but this is what leadership is.”

“He’s _happy_.”

“I know he is. And I don’t want to see that happiness taken away, but James isn’t a regular boy. He’s going to grow up to rule. He’s going to inherit a broken people and a war that he can’t fight without warriors. If James bonds to Steven like he plans, who stands to inherit once they’re both gone? Our people are already fractioned, will we risk war without an heir?”

Papa is silent for a long time, head bowed as he looks at his hands clasped in his lap. “He’s happy,” he whispers once more, brokenly. “That’s all I ever wanted for him.”

Steven realizes just how private this moment is and he slips away, head full of swirling thoughts as he wonders what he’s going to tell James. Papa is right. James is happy, and there isn’t anything that Steven wouldn’t do to keep him that way. But, as much as Steven doesn’t want to admit it, Nicholas is right too. Their people deserve the promise of a strong future just as much as James and Steven deserve their happy ending, and he just isn’t sure that they can have it both ways.

* * *

In the end, he decides not to tell James anything. Papa doesn’t bring it up to either of them and James is just so happy that Steven can’t bring himself to shatter that happiness. And truth be told, he doesn’t want to. He wants James for as long as he can have him and if that means keeping quiet about the things he’s overheard, then he can keep this one secret. He thinks that James suspects something but, perhaps out of an unspoken understanding that he doesn’t _want_ to know, he never asks what’s going on in Steven’s head.

The years pass, first one, then two, then three, and Steven continues to grow until he’s one of the biggest alphas in the village, second only to James. He’s too big now to eavesdrop on secret conversations, though he knows they’re still happening, judging by Papa’s worried glances towards the two of them. He attends the training sessions, more than any of the other warriors in the village in an attempt to make up for the years he lost when he was still too small to fight. Nicholas takes him on as an apprentice, learning more about what it takes to council their king, plan the raids against the Bains, and take care of their people. At night, he slips into James’ room or James slips into his and they sleep curled around each other, just as they have for so many years.

They’ve never taken it further than fingers interlaced with each other and chaste kisses to each other’s foreheads. Steven wants to—gods above but he wants to—but every time he thinks about kissing James’ smiling mouth, he thinks of Nicholas saying that James must choose an omega. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to stand it if he can have this for only an instant before it’s snatched away from him. James is holding back too, he notices, and he doesn’t know why but sometimes, he wonders if James is just as aware that he needs an omega as Steven is.

* * *

It all comes to a head the year they turn eighteen. Papa requests that James stay after supper. When Steven hesitates on his way out the door, Papa gives him a tense smile and waves him on.

He hesitates a moment longer to turn to James. “It’s fine,” James assures him, smile as guileless as it always is.

Steven doesn’t think it is but he can’t think of an excuse to stay so he leaves and heads back to his room. He hasn’t yet had a chance to look over the maps of the bay Nicholas had given him earlier in the day, and he thinks he might try to look at them now. He knows that Nicholas won’t be upset with him if he doesn’t get to it before tomorrow but he likes being able to impress his mentor, and Nicholas will certainly be impressed if Steven can figure out a potential new fishing ground for tomorrow’s council meeting.

He’s only been looking over the maps for a couple minutes before his door slams open, ricocheting off the wall so hard, it nearly rebounds back into James’ nose. Startled, Steven almost tears the map he’s holding in two before quickly setting it down to avoid any further damage.

James is _furious_ , that much is obvious. He stalks into the room, muttering too low for Steven to make out any of the words other than “forced” and “omega.” Steven sighs, heart sinking with the realization that Papa must have finally told James what the elders have been discussing all these years. He stands, tucking his hands behind his back to hide how badly they’re shaking.

He starts to say, “James,” only to cut off when James’ head snaps up to look at him, eyes hard and blazing.

“I don’t _want_ an omega,” James says firmly and then he’s striding forward, taking Steven’s head between his hands, and kissing him firmly. And _oh._ Steven has kissed before, kissed and been kissed, back years before when he was trying to figure out if he could ever be happy without James in his life, and it has never— _never_ —been like this. There’s a rush of heat racing through him from every point where he and James are pressed together. James’ mouth on his is sure and teasing and _wonderful_ , like James himself is, the way Steven has imagined he would be.

James pulls back after what seems like an eternity and an instant all at once, only to bury his face in Steven’s neck. Steven’s hands—when did they make their way onto James’ hips?—come up to gently stroke James’ back, soothing him as best as he can.

“I only want you,” James whispers brokenly.

“We’ll figure it out,” Steven promises him. But he fears that they’re running out of time.

* * *

The next few months are simultaneously some of the happiest and some of the hardest months of his life. He has James just as he’s longed for, in his bed, in his life, holding him, kissing him. And yet, in some ways, he doesn’t have James at all. At least once a week, Papa introduces James to yet another young omega, lovely and perfect and exactly what the village needs. And every single time, James makes polite conversation with them at supper, dances with them in the evening, and then returns to Steven’s bed.

“You could help, you know,” Papa complains to him once. They’re working together on hanging out the laundry to dry, Steven draping the clothes over the lines as Papa fastens them to the line to keep them from falling into the dirt.

Steven looks at him steadily. He’s grown taller than Papa in the last year, he suddenly realizes. Papa just seems so much larger than life, the feared Warlord of the North, the savior of their people. It’s easy to miss that he’s growing older, that both James and Steven have grown taller than him. He turns back to the clothes, discomfited by the realization.

“Why would I do that?” he asks evenly as he drapes another shirt over the line. He smooths out the wrinkles, refusing to look at Papa.

“He has a duty,” Papa reminds him, “to his people.”

Steven puts the shirt he’s holding back in the basket and turns to fully face Papa. He thinks he needs to for what he’s about to say. “He has a duty to his heart as well. He has a duty to me.”

* * *

It’s Nicholas who plants the idea in Steven’s mind, Nicholas who looks at him shrewdly one day as they’re planning out a new route through the shipping lanes for a raid, Nicholas who says, “It’s a shame James can’t have both.”

Steven pauses. “How do you mean?”

Nicholas shrugs. It looks casual, but Steven gets the impression that it only looks that way because it’s been practiced. “Both you _and_ an omega.”

“Right,” Steven says with a forced laugh. “Because that would be impossible and preposterous and—” _And fantastic_ , he adds silently.

Nicholas hums thoughtfully and returns to the maps. After a moment, Steven joins him, thoughts whirling through his brain.

* * *

“What if you could have both?” he asks James later that night. “Me and an omega?”

James chuckles bemusedly. “Why would I want both? It’s hard enough keeping up with just you. What would I do with an omega on top of that?”

Steven kisses him for that, James’ hand coming up to cup his face. It could turn into something more but he pulls away after a moment, grinning when James groans and plants his face into the side of Steven’s arm. “No, I’m serious,” he says. “Your father’s right. You’re going to need an heir and there are a lot of things that I can do, but that’s not one of them.”

“Be an heir?”

“ _Give_ you an heir.” He shoots James an unamused look but James just smiles crookedly and leans in for another kiss. Steven leans back. “James, we need to think about this. You’ve been preparing for years to take over leadership of our people, you know that there’s a serious concern about who will inherit after you.”

“And you think I should choose an omega for that, in addition to you?” James says flatly.

“Or both of us choose one together.”

He can see by the startled look on James’ face that James hadn’t thought of that option. Steven laughs.

“What, you thought I was going to be okay with you going from bed to bed?” he teases. “I like to think we know each other a little better than that.”

“You really think that could work?”

“I think,” Steven says slowly, “that there’ve been more than a few omegas your father’s introduced you to that you might have been interested in if it weren’t for me.”

“And what about you?”

“Well, I already know that I tend to like mouthy brunets with a penchant for trouble so I think I’m pretty much set.” He means for it to be a joke but James doesn’t laugh. Instead, his frown deepens, the furrow between his brows getting more pronounced. Steven gently brushes a kiss over his troubled mouth. “Hey. We don’t have to find an omega tomorrow. We can think this over, let Papa know our plan. We’ve got time.”

* * *

Now, looking at Tony Stark in his torn silks, Steven knows that they’re out of time.

He doesn’t know what made Papa decide to give up on waiting for Steven and James to choose an omega. He doesn’t know why Papa chose _Tony Stark_ of all people. The omega is already promised to the Bains, the whole continent knows this—Papa is risking war on two fronts just by bringing him here.

He chances a glance at James to see him staring incredulously at Papa. James likely looks calm to anyone who doesn’t know him as well as Steven does, but Steven _does_ know him, and he can see the way James’ hands are trembling under the table, read the tension in every line of his body. James is _fuming_ , angry that their choice has been taken from them after he spent so long fighting back in what small ways he could, and that spells trouble for both of them—and likely for the poor omega too, who didn’t choose this.

“You must be joking,” James abruptly exclaims, switching to Stark’s language. Steven doesn’t speak the southern language but he understands it well enough, and he wonders at James’ change. Is this meant to help Stark? Dishearten him? …Scare him?

“You promised me years ago you’d find an omega,” Papa responds, in their own language, which surprises Steven. Is he trying to avoid alarming Stark? “You haven’t done as you promised, so I’ve brought one back for you.”

“I’m already married!” James snaps, gesturing at Steven.

Papa straightens up, his presence suddenly becoming larger and more foreboding, reminding Steven of how this man became the Warlord of the North. It doesn’t seem to cow James though, whose eyes are blazing with fury.

“You’ve had _years!”_ Papa argues. “And you are no closer to finding an omega now than you were when you promised me you would try. I wonder if this hasn’t always been your plan, to wait me out until I gave up.”

“Look at him!” James shouts. “Is he even old enough to wed?”

“I can speak for myself.”

The words come from Stark himself, surprising everyone. Steven turns to him, noting the embarrassed flush on his cheeks. But his eyes—those are cool and calm.

James leans back in his chair. “So,” he drawls, “the mouse can fight back.”

Stark’s eyes flash, revealing the anger beneath the calm veneer. “I am not a mouse,” he spits. “And I am old enough to wed, you—”

Steven doesn’t know the term that Stark uses, and neither does James judging by the way he lunges out of his chair, nearly tipping it over, but they both can tell that it’s an insult of some kind.

“James,” Steven says urgently, reaching out a hand to stop him, but James shrugs him off, stalking around the table to stand in front of Stark, glaring down at him.

“What did you call me?” he growls.

Stark opens his mouth to respond, eyes still flashing angrily. James’ blade is quicker, drawn and at Stark’s throat in an instant. The omega quails before James’ fury, leaning back as much as he can from the sword.

“ _James_ ,” Steven repeats. There’s a time for James to stand his ground, but this isn’t it, not when there’s so much at stake.

James ignores him though, waiting until Stark says quietly, “Thank you for your kindness in speaking my language,” before he relaxes his grip, though the sword doesn’t move far from Stark’s throat.

“Ah little mouse,” James says, chuckling just a little. “That was no kindness. That was so that you would know your fate.”

“A kindness unknowingly given is still a kindness,” Stark returns, biting the words out.

Steven can see it in the way James holds himself—he’s surprised. Stark has managed to surprise him, something not easily done. James hesitates and then sheathes his sword before crouching down in front of the omega.

“Don’t you want to know what your fate is?” James asks him, feathering the words over Stark’s lips, which he traces with a deceptively gentle finger. A nearly overwhelming feeling of dread washes over Steven. He doesn’t know what’s about to happen next but he knows it won’t be good. “You’re to be my omega bride to warm my bed.”

It’s outrageous. It’s shocking. It’s something that James would never, in a million years, say if he hadn’t been so angry with his father and forced to his limits. And yet, even knowing that James has been pushed there, Steven lunges to his feet, furious with the callous, _cruel_ way that James is treating the omega.

But Stark reacts first. His eyes flash again, and Steven knows that he’s been pushed to his limits, just as James has. Faster than James can react, Stark gets his mouth around James’ finger and bites.

And even through all the chaos of James yelling, and the people rushing forward to pull the two away from each other, and Stark spitting insults in his language, Steven finds the time to think to himself, _He’s right. He’s not such a mouse after all._


End file.
